Masked
by FantasyEmpress
Summary: His spirit called out to me. We were one and the same, two different souls encased in whatever incomprehensible bond held us. Peas in a pod. Elizabeth's point of view. Read&Review! Oneshot.


**Disclaimer: I don't own PotC, or anything else you might recognize as being someone else's stuff. I'm just borrowing. **

**A/N: Nothing special about this one. I just love that deleted scene from CotBP, and wanted to use it. They really should have left it in. Maybe they would have, if they knew what they were gonna do with the second one. Who knows. Whateva.**

It was clear and starry, the first night I saw into Jack Sparrow's heart. The sand, the fire, the sound of the waves lapping against the shore. It was like a passage pulled right out of a book, though a book might have given more time to tender kisses in the darkness, and less to coy manipulations. In those days, I still clung to some semblance of propriety. I told myself I would rather smell the soot and sweat of a blacksmith's embrace, rather than the rum tainted advances of a pirate. I told myself to keep myself apart from him, to focus on the fact that I must take advantage of him if we were to escape this wretched island. But his words in the darkness took hold of something in my heart. _"…what a ship is…what the Black Pearl really is… is freedom." _There was so much in those words, so much emotion, the eternal human longing for something we can never quite reach, the horizon that is always far away, no matter how far we chase it. Some part of me fell in love with some part of Jack Sparrow that night.

It was misty and dim, the second night I saw into Jack Sparrow's heart. The creaking of the ship, the history and death around us; a graveyard, not only of men, but of ships, which to a sailor are much more tragically lost than a few men. Jack stared over them as if looking at the bodies of friends lost. _"You didn't tell him about the curse." _It was not an accusation. It was just a truth. _"I noticed neither did you. For the same reason I imagine." "He wouldn't have risked it." _Jack grinned, but there was insincerity there. I think he was hurt, almost betrayed, not by my burning our supplies, but by the fact that I chose to go around him, rather than act with him. _"Could'a gotten him drunk."_ I glared at him. I had done what was necessary. What more did he want? _"Don't get me wrong luv. I admire a person who is willing to do whatever is necessary." _Somehow I was not surprised at how closely his words echoed my thoughts. I gave him a little smile. _"You're a smart man Jack." _The look he gave me then was indescribable. Was it really possible that no one else saw past the ruse? Was I the first person to pay him such a compliment? Were others stupid enough to think him a fool? I saw the intelligence in those eyes, heard it in his manner of speech, _felt _it in the air around him, as if his soul reached out to mine, like a child calling desperately. _Look at me, really look at me. See who I am behind the mask, behind the act. See me. _Flustered, I quickly dredged up something to make him stop looking at me like that. _"But I don't entirely trust you."_ His mask slipped back into place like the iron visor of a knight, hiding his true features.He came so close I could feel the warmth of him. _"Peas in a pod, darlin'." _His spirit called out to me. We were one and the same, two different souls encased in whatever incomprehensible bond held us. Peas in a pod.

It's strange, how, of all the moments, all the different days and nights over so many years, that I have seen behind Jack's mask, those first two are somehow preeminent. More so than our fateful first kiss, more so than when he gave up immortality to save the man I thought I loved, more so than the day married me, after Barbossa killed Will. For those two memories; the night he spoke of a freedom we could not seemingly attain and the way he looked when he realized I saw through the mask of false foolishness, they are the moments when I first started to love him.

Even now, it is hard for him to let the mask down. He had, I think, almost convinced himself that he was a fool, after acting the part for so long. Sometimes at night I sit on his lap and whisper to him how _I _see him, how in him I see everything I have ever admired; strength, freedom, goodness, intelligence. Sometimes I feel his doubt in his kiss; like our first kiss, he sometimes will not wrap his arms around me, insists on letting me lead, and I will not. I will not touch him until he acts the man I know he is, until he drags me close and buries his rough fingers in my hair and kisses me wildly and intensely, and then I follow him willingly. Those are the best moments, when he lets himself become what he was meant to be. I am determined that that is the man Willy and John and Kathy will look up to and call Father. Captain Jack Sparrow, leader of men, bright to the point of genius, handsome and strong and courageous. For that is what he has always been, no matter what mask he dons. A good man, and a pirate, who I love with all my heart.


End file.
